Language of Music

"Why do humans find music so addictive and pleasurable?" Dr. Oliver Sachs describes what heʻs discovering about music: What is your favorite music, and why?

Spelling Quiz Week 35

Humans and nature?

Would nature be "nature" without humans to label it? Nature is "natural" compared to what, us? Are we humans NOT natural? If not, then what? Enjoy this episode of Human Planet about cities.

Experience of Nature

Enjoy this full episode of Human Planet, episode One, about how humans are able to survive with nature.

Writing about Science

Science and poetry may not seem to be obviously linked, but the mysteries of nature have often inspired writers. Watch this video about the chambered nautilus:


 And now read this poem about this creature.

The Chambered Nautilus
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
   Sails the unshadowed main,—
   The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
   And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
   Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
   And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
   Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
   That spread his lustrous coil;
   Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
   Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
   Child of the wandering sea,
   Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
   While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
   As the swift seasons roll!
   Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
   Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea! 

Beautiful Words for Beautiful Nature

Here is a sampling of famous poems about the beauty of nature, read set to lovely images. Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem, "Pied Beauty" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Snowflakes" And his "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" Now as you watch the videos below, describe what you see, hear, feel and experience in the comments.

Spelling Quiz 31 Week of March 25, 2013